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researcher have made a breakthrough in the race to save the world’sbananasfrom a devastating disease that could wipe them out , according to a new study .
The banana we eat , call Cavendish banana , are jeopardize by a industrial plant - killing disease called fusarium wilt . This disease has already wiped out other banana tree varieties , and it devastated banana product in the 1950s .
The bananas we eat are at risk of extinction because of a disease called fusarium wilt.
But in the Modern survey , research worker found that the disease separate out threatening bananas today did n’t evolve from the strain that caused so much damage in the 20th century and that there may be a way to manipulate its spread .
The squad ’s determination , published Friday ( Aug. 16 ) in the journalNature Microbiology , could serve obviate an impending " banana tree Book of Revelation , " according to astatementfrom the University of Massachusetts Amherst .
" The kind of banana we eat today is not the same as the one your grandparents ate , " contemplate senior authorLi - Jun Ma , a prof of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst , said in the statement . " Those old ones , the Gros Michel banana tree , are functionally nonextant , victims of the first Fusarium eruption in the 1950s . "
A banana plant with fusarium wilt disease.
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There are many species of wild banana and we grow legion varieties . Today , the most common banana found in workshop is the Cavendish banana tree from the speciesMusa acuminata . Almost all of the global banana exports come from this motley , according to theRoyal Botanic Gardens , Kewin the U.K.
Cavendish bananas were multiply to resist the strain of fusarium wilting that pass over out Gros Michel banana . However , a 2nd outbreak of fusarium wilting that did affect the Cavendish multifariousness emerged in the 1990s , and the Cavendish has been under terror ever since . Like bananas , fusarium wilt disease has many varieties , and each affect a unlike plant host , harmonise to the statement .
When researchers compared 36Fusariumstrains from around the world , they found that the one cause the current outbreak use gene that produce fungal nitric oxide to attack hosts , according to the survey . The squad does n’t know how these genes lead the disease to taint Cavendish banana tree . However , they found that the disease ’s virulence — its capacity to damage a legion — was reduced when the genes were eliminated , so cut down the nitric oxide could be key to command the disease .
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Although the unexampled bailiwick could avail bring through our favorite banana tree , Ma noted that monocropping — growing the same craw every yr — is the underlying trouble face bananas , and they will be vulnerable to disease as long as we continue to rely on a single variety .
" When there ’s no diversity in a Brobdingnagian commercial-grade crop , it becomes an leisurely target for pathogens , " Ma said . " Next time you ’re patronize for bananas , attempt some dissimilar varieties that might be useable in your local long suit intellectual nourishment computer memory . "
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